i think that… approximately 100% of the time, parents, teachers, etc… have this misconception that neurodivergent kids & teens don’t know anything about how to handle their neurodivergence.
for years, i suffered through people making suggestions of things that were things i had done, and either weren’t worth the effort or they actually made things worse. i told them this, and if i was still having any issues with the same problem they’d say something about “well if you’re not gonna listen to any suggestions…” when I did. they’re the one who didn’t listen when i told them that doesn’t work for me. They assume that because I didn’t try it in front of them (which is often impossible), I never tried it. I tried doing my homework as soon as I got home. I tried doing my homework at the table, I tried working where I was comfortable. I tried listening to music, I tried working in silence. I tried using a planner, I tried setting reminders on my phone, I tried. I tell people that I have executive functioning issues and they say that I have to work on it like I haven’t been doing that as long as I’ve had to do things and it’s so much better than it was before. I’m as able as I am now because I’ve spent 18 years working on it.
One of my friends has ADHD, and at one point when her grades dropped her parents took her phone, despite her telling them that the only way she can focus on her homework is to listen to music, for which she needs her phone.
I was in a study hall with another friend, who also has ADHD. Sometimes, they would be able to focus and do their work. Others, they would end up being entirely unable to and would do other stuff. The “instructional support” person would start bothering them about it, insist that they try. As if they hadn’t already done so.
I am tired of watching people assume that neurodivergent people aren’t trying, or we haven’t tried. We’re always trying.
I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.
I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”
But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.
She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.
I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.
It’s not just about equal division of labor. It’s also about, “this thing is important to her. If he ignores it, he’s saying that what she wants is irrelevant to him.”
And that’s a guy saying, “I’m only spending time with you because it’s pleasant for me.” He’s already decided what’s “really” important, and her input is not welcome.
If he won’t do the dishes and laundry, he’s looking for fun, not a partnership. And his “leftist” ideals will be the same–something he studies because it’s interesting to him; a form of activism that he thinks will bring him a better life. If he can’t do household tasks that matter to a person he loves, he sure as hell can’t support policies that help people whose struggles he doesn’t even acknowledge are real.
We had to write a Mini Comic for my Illustration Class so I did mine based on The Frog and The Scorpion. Hopefully you all know the story!
But if you don’t know the story… In the original the scorpion stings the frog in the middle of the river. When the frog asks “why” the scorpion says “it’s in my nature” and they both die. I like my ending more.
Done with watercolor and pen and ink nib.
I always thought this story was fucked up, even when I heard it as a very young child. I even got put in the naughty corner, and a star next to my name crossed off for questioning it.
This story is so much better, and I like it’s message much more.
Today, We Should Be Celebrating Stacy Abrams Becoming the 1st Black Female Governor of Any U.S. State, However…
Intense voter suppression and corruption by the Republican in this race, who just so happens to be the AG of the State of GA (and thus in charge of some aspects of the election), has muddled and possibly stolen the election. Here’s more about this Republican bullshittery…
Georgia’s Kemp Purged 340,134 Voters, Falsely Asserting They Had Moved
Last year, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state canceled the
registrations of over half a million Georgians because they left the
state or moved to another county. Except they didn’t. The nation’s top
experts in address location reviewed Kemp’s list of purged voters — and
returned the names and addresses of 340,134 who never moved at all.
John Lenser, CEO of CohereOne of San Rafael, California, led the team
analyzing the purge list. He concluded, “340,000 of those voters
remained at their original address. They should have never been removed
from the voter registration rolls…”
Despite Brian Kemp’s Promises, Some of the Voters He Suspended Say They’re Being Turned Away at the Polls
Kemp promised these voters could cast a regular ballot, but hundreds of them have reported being denied a ballot.
Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and Republican candidate for
governor, has implemented voter registration policies that caused the
state to suspend 53,000 registration applications since last summer.
Kemp’s office has insisted that people who submitted those applications
will still be able to vote as normal, but on Tuesday, a group monitoring
election irregularities has received hundreds of reports from voters in
Georgia who say their registrations were suspended and they are being
turned away from the polls.
When news of the suspended registrations broke last month, Kemp’s office
tried to tamp down the outrage by pointing out that these voters could
still cast regular ballots under Georgia law. His spokeswoman expressed
indignation that the rejected applications—70 percent of which belonged
to African Americans, even though Georgia is just 32 percent black—were
being cited as evidence of voter suppression. But Kemp’s office may
have failed to adequately educate county election officials about the
issue, resulting in some voters being disenfranchised on Election Day.
This kind of confusion is exactly what voting rights advocates warned about…
Polling
places have been quietly shuttered across the country, in a transparent
bid to make it tougher for minorities and the poor to vote.
How about Georgia, where Democrat Stacey Abrams is trying to ride an emerging Democratic majority to victory against Kemp and hasten the end of two decades of white Republican dominance?
Surprise, surprise: More than 200 polls have closed since the Roberts
Court gave the state a green light to discriminate. And as The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionrevealed
this summer (Kemp’s secretary of state office conveniently keeps no
track of the closures), they correlate in near-perfect synchronicity
with concentrations of high poverty rates across the state—the places
where fewer people have cars to drive to the polls, where public
transportation is often non-existent, and where African Americans vote Democratic.
The
closures in Georgia could, just as surely as Kemp’s aggressive purges
of registered black voters from the rolls, determine the outcome in his
dead-heat race with Abrams. This is just pure coincidence, both the
secretary of state and local elections officials insist—simply a matter
of local Republicans making elections more “cost-efficient” by “consolidating” polling places in more “convenient” white neighborhoods…
I guess since I’m a fairly visible autistic blogger I should talk a little bit about neurodiversity/disability justice so
Any system that doesn’t follow the structure of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” is unjust to those with lesser abilities or greater needs
And dispose of the thought of determining anyone else’s abilities or needs, now or ever. The solution will never be to categorize and individually diagnose every single condition that might affect someone’s ability, giving Latin names to the ones that you decide deserve respect and telling everyone else to suck it up and stop being lazy
Radical disability/neurodiversity justice is guaranteeing access to all material needs to everyone, and making all labor and activities voluntary and consensual. No one should have the power to decide what or how much someone needs, or what or how much someone should provide. No one should have the power to decide who’s “gaming the system” or “just being lazy”
The able-bodied, the neurotypical, and those who suffer from allism can feel free to reblog this
Don’t be. You’re hearing media do what it does: harp on one person’s lack of enthusiasm and make it seem that that one opinion is held by thousands.
This race went precisely as I thought it would. Precisely.
And it was absolutely a massive success.
So let me tell you why, so that you feel better and can easily put down the annoying crowing that republicans are going to do, because they managed to cling to a few things.
If the votes fall as I believe they will, the democrats will have retaken the house by some 30 seats. This is impressive and somewhat unique in our country’s history. The GOP, upon taking the house originally, jerrimandered these districts in impressively screwball ways. Wherever that rigging has been overturned, the districts have gone blue. Which is, of course, why they did it. Democrats have the house now, 30ish flips in republican rugged districts. 15 of those being female candidates.
That is absolutely impressive.
A few key candidates to whom many people were paying close attention did not perform as people desired. Abrams, O’Rourke, Gillum. Well…I’m not surprised. Abrams faces absolute state wide fraud. Her opponent being the person also in charge of voter registration, withholding some 50k votes of which 70% were black. Voter intimidation. This is blatant corruption. And yet still…her race was very close. So too with Beto. Ted Crews was a presidential candidate! When he took Texas, he did so with a wide margin. Last night in Texas he was fighting tooth and nail. Gillum’s goobenatorial race for Florida was a figurative dead heat. 99% of the vote in—49% Gillum, 49.7% DeSantis. These are CLASSICALLY and FULLY republican regions in which Trump took the presidency by huge margins. That these races, with all those challenges, were as close as they were PROVES that something unprecedented happened.
3-400% voter turnout increases for a midterm election. Mostly with the youth.
But let’s talk about what it means to have the house.
Now I know you’re probably concerned about the federal judgeships that are about to pop up for consideration, and it’s true that the Senate was needed to stop approvals of those candidates, but…
Control of the house means that Democrats now take hold of some critical committees. These committees are the very ones that will be overseeing corruption allegations. Ways and Means, energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Intelligence, appropriations, foreign affairs, armed services, judiciary, transportation and infrastructure, and…government reform.
How do you feel now?
The worst political fallout of a GOP controlled government, the worst sound bites that weren’t Trump’s, the worst slaps across the face? All came from footage of those very same committees. Those committees now belong to Democrats.
Massive policy shifts also occurred in many classically conservative states—legalizing marijuana votes, Florida giving the vote back to former criminals who’ve served their time thus giving the vote back to a HUGE portion of the African-American Community that has been held in check by a racist and classicist policing method, then there were upsets in many small ways too.
I promise you…this is all excellent and it will have truly important and forceful impact. In 2020, if we can keep that same enthusiasm and rage, the entire government will shift. But that can only happen if we keep moving forward, if the candidates who won keep their noses to the grindstone and push back hard, if you and I and everyone on the ground continues to talk about this and force out bigots and greed.
Do not be discouraged. I promise you…this was an amazing election. Don’t focus on a few bright stars and think that all is lost because they fell. There is a great deal happening here, and one thing I know from being at sea—when a wave is building, there is first a terrifying shift, as the water level begins to build. The ship will begin to dip and then of a sudden, the swell will begin. The ship raises and passengers suddenly realize that the were much higher than before, with an incredible view. Then the wave crests and destroys what’s in its path.
We didn’t see a wave crest tonight. So what. That means it’s a much larger wave than we realized. It will crest in the future. But only if that fluid pressure is maintained.
This is good. It is. So long as everyone keeps working. This is good.
Calm down. Have a glass of champagne. A cup of tea. When they Trumpet all their noise…say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. You’re higher than you were with an excellent view of the ending. So relax. Don’t fret.
Listen to Simon, y’all. Simon is wise.
I was gonna write all of this, but it’s easier to reblog it. And in addition all that Simon said, the house is necessary for legislation. The ACA is safe, along with many other things. Plus the house and senate are both needed for budget approval. Also importantly, it is the HOUSE that initiates impeachment proceedings. Now, personally, I would prefer if Trump was voted out, but that’s secondary to two more years of damage. So it’s likely that his tax records will be subpoenaed and the results of the Mueller investigation can actually be acted on now. I’m not saying that this is like an immediate thing that’ll happen, I’m just saying it’s possible now whereas before it wasn’t. Conviction is another story, but you don’t need the senate to impeach.
PLUS! Voter turnout was the highest it’s ever been. People are piiiiissed, and the presidential election and time since then has obviously been a wake up for previously unengaged voters.
Yes. All that is true.
Absolutely true. The house has tremendous power. What you’re seeing as actually the best possible result short of every Dem winning. This means that power can now be consolidated and things done properly. It means that we have the ability to lay siege. Even better, they cannot stop it. They’re stuck with it.
So Trump will do his peacock dance and lie and lie and lie.
Good.
The more he lies the angrier people get.
Let your enemy do what they do best…be an intolerable asshole who will recruit your companions for you.
The worst men are only ever be undone by themselves. They build defenses, they gather resources, they become complacent and proud. Then they alienate and offend. And then they lie. That’s when the enemies they’ve made find tiny weak spots and begin to chip away. That’s when massive holes open. That’s how sieges are won.
Keep pushing.
Plus, Beto O’Rourke may not be a Senator but he’s still a Congressman. A Democratic Congressman in a Democratic-controlled House. He did brilliantly in the Senate race and he’s not out of the equation by a longshot.
Hold firm. Keep pushing. Stay angry. Get more voters. Change is coming if we make it happen. And we can.
Also, give money to the ACLU Foundation because we need to sue Kemp for corruption.
Oh so you think Steve Rogers, who grew up during the Great Depression & Also fought in WW2, doesn’t have a fatalistic sense of humour that rivals that of the most hardened Gen Z teen? Hah okay then
Peter Parker, after failing his Spanish assessment: Lol when will death befall me
The rest of the Avengers: Ohmygod Peter honey it’s okay it’ll get better I promise please don’t say things like that you’re gonna be okay-
Steve, high-fiving him: We can only pray the reaper will arrive early for his appointment with us kid
The first conversation they ever have is when they both have breakfast at the Avengers Tower. Steve burns his toast & he just looks at the wall and declares, completely deadpan, “There is literally No Point to existence At All’ and then on the other side of the room he hears the instant response of “oh mood” which is basically the story of how Peter Parker & Steve Rogers bonded for life.
Plot Designing 